Beyond Google for your research: Plan your search

The following steps are involved in the planning process:

  ♦  Identify your topic
  ♦  Build your search
  ♦  Analyse your task 

• Why are you writing this? To persuade, describe, discuss?
• What type of information do you need?
• How recent should the information be? Historical, current
• Where will you find the information you need? 

  ♦ Access the search tools

Remember, searching is not a linear process. 
You may change your search as you discover more information.

Conducting a literature review?

To find material on the topic and manage what you find you will need to:

• determine your selection criteria
• search a variety of different search tools
• search using a variety of keywords and subject headings (descriptors) in various combinations
• capture and organise your search results using a tool such as EndNote

To better understand the 'type' of review you may need to conduct, look at the information in the following guides. 

What type of information do you need? Do you need to use primary, secondary or tertiary sources? Secondary and tertiary sources are generally indexed by library databases. 

General

  primary sources:
diaries, letters, interviews, personal journals, laboratory log books, statistical information, survey results or raw data 

​  secondary sources:
background information and summarised results of research work in an area of study. Secondary sources include books, articles and theses

​  tertiary sources:
compile the information available in secondary sources and include systematic reviews, case studies, and bibliographies

Medical and Health sciences sources

 primary sources
Journal articles detailing original research. They tend to be very specific and written by experts in the field. 

 secondary sources
Provide interpretations, explanations and summaries of primary sources. Common sources include review articles in journals

 tertiary sources
Primary and secondary source information which has been collated and summarised. Introduce the current state of research on a topic. Examples include encyclopaedias, almanacs, and pathfinders

Legal material

  Primary sources
are the law as created by the parliament and the courts including bills, legislation, regulations, explanatory memoranda and case law

 Secondary sources
assist you in locating and interpreting primary sources. They include books, digests, legal dictionaries, legal encyclopaedias, parliamentary debates (Hansard), parliamentary papers, looseleaf services, journal articles and newspaper articles

Watch this short video to learn why keywords are important, how you can identify them, and how they can help you find better information for your research

Combine keywords using OR, AND or NOT

OR: Combines similar keywords

• Using OR will broaden your search to find items containing either or both of your keywords
• eg  work OR employment

   AND: Combines different keywords

• Using AND will narrow your search to find items containing both of your keywords
• eg  management AND employees

             NOT: Excludes words from the search

• eg email NOT spam
• Be cautious about using NOT as you may exclude potentially useful items

Where will you find the information you need? 

• search the UniSA Library catalogue 
• check the library catalogues of other libraries
• search a database for journal articles
• look at diaries or letters, or interview someone
• internet

You can save time searching databases by using Truncation, Wild Cards and Phrase Searching.

• Truncation (typically *) finds any word ending eg. learn* finds learn, learners, learning etc.
• Wild Cards (typically ?) finds different word spellings eg. organi?ation finds organisation, organization.
• Phrase Searching (typically " ") keeps 2 + words together as a phrase eg. "higher education" 

See the Guide below for more information.